Chapter Rooms
 

Just posing a question...

After hearing and reading about various organizations rules when it comes to Chapter rooms, It came to me that every organization handles them differently. I was under the impression for the last 3 years that everyone had the same rules. For instance, our house doesn't let anyone in the chapter room except Theta Xi brothers (not even a plumber or electrician or associate), while another house I know has parties in theirs. I was reading another posting where they were saying that associates can go into the chapter room. And shows on TV show chapter meetings or at least what their chapter rooms look like. Hell... we don't even tell the new associates and any other people where our chapter room is (its hidden). Only on initiation day will they know where it is (kinda cool surprise).
So the question...

What's your policy on your chapter room and is it that way nationally?

We have an informal chapter room and a formal chapter room. The informal chapter room is really like our den... we watch movies and TV in there, and anyone is allowed to hang out in there (male guests, non-sisters, etc.) Then we have a formal chapter room... I'm a pledge, so I don't really know much about that room. A lot of stuff is stored in there right now LOL.

We have nothing:D

But other houses have chapter rooms and only permit initiates to enter with the exception of candidates entering for ceremonial purposes. Sometimes, once a new member becomes a candidate they will use the chapter room for something but only under specific circumstances.

I was an active member long before a lot of you were born. We had a huge chapter room. Anyone could go in there except during meetings or ritural events. We used it for Study Tables, getting away from crowds, just a nice quiet place. It was a big rectangle room with windows facing out onto the stree that had shutters we closed during ritual and meetings. Ritual materials were in a locked closet that only the President had the key and a member of the House Corporation.

DaffyKD

Our house was originally a private home, and our chapter room was the living room, so it's really the middle of the house. You can't come in without going into it. The only other room of any size is the living room, which is off the chapter room and also can't be isolated. If we had designed our house from the ground up, I definitely would have put in a real chapter room.

Because on my campus we cannot have sorority houses (5 or more women living in a house is a brothel), there is an all greek dorm. Well in this dorm we have a room which we use as a chapter room, which is open to anyone, except during meetings and ritual. It is a place to hang out or study. We do not have the option of haing something more private, because it is a dorm.

Our chapter room is downstairs off of our dining room and anybody can go into it. We study, work on projects, etc in there.

Phi Kaps here have the chapter room pretty much out in the open connected to their dining area and they clear the furniture out of it to have parties... it's even less private than ours :)

That's about all I know about chapter rooms though... the only experiences I've had with them!

~April

we actually wanted our chapter room in our new house to be phi psi exclucive...but there was no way to manage that since the house is not that big and at some time pledges will need to use the room for their meetings. i know that the ucla phi psi has a chapter room that you have to be a brother to get into. it is a really cool idea, and i wish we had that in our house.

Yes there is :-).

LOL maybe I should be sure of what I'm talking about before I post. We put our bags and keys in there one day so that our Bigs could secretly steal the keys and decorate our rooms... and I didn't see any sort of ceremony.

I have a lot to learn and I'm the first one to admit it! Thanks.

How would you hide a chapter room? Could anyone give ideas (without revealing too much)?

My sorority was unhoused, but Panhel had a room in the student center that members of all sororities could use. AEPhi and Theta (the two unhoused sororities) stored our ritual stuff there, in locked trunks, and we could use the room for committee meetings. Panhel meetings were also held there. People could also hang out there and study as long as there wasn't a meeting going on. That was the closest thing we had to a chapter room.

To answer ktsnake's question - when my husband and I were house hunting, we saw a house with a hidden room in the basement. You opened up what looked like a closet door and there was a pretty big room behind it. Since it was in the basement, you couldn't see that the outside wall didn't match up with the inside wall.

I think whether a chapter has a chapter room depends on the size of the house and whether it was built from the start as a fraternity/sorority house. My chapter house was built as a private home 130+ years ago and there is no way to have a secure chapter room with exclusive access. We hold our formal chapter meetings in a classroom with no windows. We do have a ritual to gain access to a room that is set for formal chapter. There are chapters with secret chapter rooms on many big campuses. I visited a chapter house at a Big 10 school that had their house built (as a fraternity house from the start) in the 1920s. It had a secret chapter room that you entered through the back of a closet in the basement. It held their charter and really old archive materials, and was permanently set for chapter meetings. We had to pass the test with flying colors to get to see it!

I asked my dad about this- he said his group had the inverse of a chapter room- there was only one room in the house that non-brothers were allowed into, the rest of it was off-limits. Very weird.

Well, some are hidden behind closet/cupboard. Some just blended into wood panel walls ... Just different case for different house. Definitely worted to start one!
A chapter room is in the attic, and it blended well with the ceiling panel so that only certain people know about it. Or most of the chapter rooms are in the basement, and one can argue that the foundation of the house occupies the emptiness of the basement (if you compare the floor plan of the basement and the first floor, there is a difference that even the new members would notice).

How about the library? You can make the handle off couple books. Or the fireplace, one would not even guess something hidden there.

Our chapter house was an old house that had a lot of bedrooms. It wasn't meant to be that way, but it turned out that way I'm sure :) In any case, there was a room on the first floor that had a padlock on it, and that was the chapter room. We used it during recruitment to show off our D Phi E stuff, for ceremonies and rituals, and the new members used it for their activities. BUT, our landlord got greedy then, and he told us we couldn't have an empty room anymore, and he turned it into a bed room. It sucked.

We have two studies and a chapter room. Our studies are open to anyone. Our chapter room is, too, except there's one closet that uninitated members can't rummage through, and the week before initiation or so the chapter room is closed off to uninitated people.

Well in our house we have a huge Entertainment center (built a year ago (by me) so not a huge secret yet but the new associates don't know about it so it is working) in front of the entrance to the chapter room. I mean this thing is big (15 by 8 feet). Its on whells which are not visible. The thing easily rolls out of the way to the side. It holds a big screen TV, DVD player, sound sytem, everything a normal entertainment center would. here is a picture of it.

Basement Picture

We fixed the basement up this autumn it looks way better.

Just an idea.

Our chapter room is the largest on campus, but none of the sororitie have houses yet. The chapter rooms are on the first floor of the two high-rise dormatories on campus. I can't speak for the other sororities, but we're generally not allowed to have non-members in there: especially not during meetings, rituals, sisterhood events.

We do hold recruitment in our chapter rooms, but it's getting to the point where we have SO many girls rushing that everyone is smooshed into the rooms. Since we have recruitment in late August to early September (and this is Tennessee), the rooms get VERY hot with all the bodies in there, and luckilly for us, we're the only ones who have air conditioning.

Many of us go in the chapter room at random times to study, watch TV, or just talk. It's a rather "unwritten rule" that we normally shouldn't have non-sisters in there, but occasionally a sister will bring in her friend or boyfriend for a minute or so when we're not doing anything that shouldn't be known about by outsiders. There is always the large dorm lobbies where we can have friends/boyfriends stay and wait for us while we are in the chapter room.

Our chapter room was just re-decorated, and it has always been a formal room, although we do have informal events in there (we just move the furniture). We have an attached bathroom with two sinks, a small kitchen, and a big locked closet for ritual items.

We have two couches, an extra-large wooden table with approx. 8-10 matching chairs, two high-backed living room chairs, an entertainment center, several display cases, shelves, and end tables. We also have TONS of trophies and plaques displayed all over the room (hehehe). Framed chapter pictures line one wall, and I could just go on forever about the other decor, but I'll spare you. :D

I have heard mixed reports on how our chapter room is supposed to be.

Older alumna told us that no one was allowed in our chapter rooms, except for Alpha Gams. However, we had some consultants let our Greek Week fraternity partners in our chapter room when we were holding chapter to speak to us. They said there wasnt anything wrong with it.

Either way, I believe our chapter room is able to lock, and most people dont even know it is what it is when they visit anyways.

We only allow brother from our chapter into the chapter room, we dont allow even nationals to go into it. The reason y is kinda long and i dont feel like typing, it just got torn a new one by a test and preparing for the second of the day.......................................oh yeah a girl can see the chapter room, but it involves a blind fold, but ill leave it at that (and no she doesnt have to do the whole house......get ur minds out of the gutter :o)